Boundary Crossing in Counselling

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Question 1: What are the issues around maintaining professional boundaries and Dual relationships for natural medicine practitioners? All three articles address the somewhat controversial topic of beneficial and non-beneficial crossing of boundaries(guidelines for standard of practice) in the practice of counselling .”The role of boundaries in counselling” refers to an outline of five principles that sum up what therapeutic boundaries are based upon, these are Beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, justice and fidelity. Understanding these principles provided me with the platform for understanding how arguments were justified in the other two articles, and helped me to decide what I thought would be an appropriate response for the practitioner in the case study. In the article “To cross or not to cross : Do Boundaries in Therapy Protect or Harm” a trend can be noted in that advocation of beneficial boundary crossing is with the intention of achieving beneficence with respect to attributional factors of the client, such as age, culture, behaviour, etc. Beneficence also seems to be the basis for argument in “Professional Boundaries: The Dilemma of Dual & Multiple Relationships in Rural Clinical Practice” although this article deals more specifically with the issue of having to form multiple relationships when practicing in rural areas. Whilst it is said that the analytical point of view sees almost all boundary crossings as detrimental to almost all aspects of therapy. Examples are given in all three articles where crossing the boundaries can be beneficial for the client. There is also an argument that such rigid boundaries decreases therapeutic effectiveness. Often theoretically sound interventions are not used due to therapists fearing for the integrity of their accountability as they would not be sticking to their risk management principles. The main issue
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